This workbook should be your guide to determining the direction of your environmental management effort. Its aim is to help small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) to:

• manage environmental issues at their facilities,
• reduce overall business risks,
• improve compliance records,
• enhance management systems,
• improve the environmental performance of their products, and
• improve overall energy, environmental and economic performance.

Getting started on environmental issues—or even knowing where to start—isn’t easy. You might not know whether your company should start by reducing air emissions, eliminating wastewater, reducing waste, reducing energy use or working with suppliers to eliminate toxic materials and associated costs. The workbook takes you through a series of questions. Based on your responses, and a score that you calculate yourself, you’re directed to a number of valuable tools. At that point, you can review the tools, read their descriptions and decide how best to use them for your company.

The use of this workbook is completely voluntary. Your responses and results are intended to be confidential and are for your internal use only. They don’t have to be submitted to DEP or any other authority. If you’d like additional assistance, however, it is available from DEP. It is for anyone in a SME who is unsure where to begin an environmental management effort and is looking for help. It explores appropriate environmental management concepts to help determine the best place to start to improve your environmental performance.

This workbook was prepared by Five Winds International under a grant from PA DEP/OETD and with developmental support from United Technologies Corporation (UTC). It links to a variety of helpful tools beginning with simply producing an environmental report, to those to help get your company into compliance with regulations, to perhaps helping you implement a management system. You determine the direction you want to go based on your own needs. You are not simply sent elsewhere for information--our website directs you to all the tools listed in the workbook.

For more information, please email gstephens@state.pa.us.

Access the Workbook

(note: for easier use, check the document and click "download" to save locally to your computer as a pdf)